At least 4,815 minors have been victims of sexual violence within the Portuguese Catholic Church since 1950, according to findings presented Monday by an independent commission that heard more than 500 testimonies over the past year.
“These testimonies allow us to access a much larger network of victims, calculated on the minimum number of 4,815 victims,” said the coordinator of this expert commission, child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, when presenting their final report in Lisbon.
“It is difficult now that everything stays the same in relation to sexual violence against minors in Portugal and the awareness of its traumatic effects,” he told the press and several church leaders.
At the end of 2021, the hierarchy of the Portuguese Church had commissioned Mr. Strecht to set up a team to measure the phenomenon of child crime there.
The President of the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference, the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima José Ornelas, has to react at the end of the day on Monday.
The Portuguese bishops have also planned to meet in early March to draw the independent report’s conclusions and “eradicate as much as possible this scourge from the life of the Church,” Bishops’ Conference secretary Father Manuel told Barbasa in January.
With thousands of cases of sexual violence by priests being unearthed around the world and allegations of a cover-up by members of the clergy, Pope Francis pledged in 2019 to wage an “all-out fight” against pedophilia within the Church.
“To ask for forgiveness”
Before Portugal, several countries tried to measure this phenomenon, including France, Ireland, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands.
Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon and supreme prelate of the Portuguese Church Manuel Clemente said he was ready in April 2022 to “acknowledge the mistakes of the past” and “ask forgiveness” from the victims. He attended the presentation of the independent commission’s report on Monday.
Expected in the Portuguese capital for the World Youth Days to be held in early August, the High Priest could meet victims, as recently pointed out to young Catholics by the auxiliary bishop of Lisbon, Américo Aguiar, in charge of organizing this world gathering.
The vast majority of crimes reported to the independent commission are already statute-barred, but 25 testimonies have been submitted to prosecutors, their coordinator said.
Among those rare cases is that of Alexandra, the middle name of a 43-year-old woman who wishes to remain anonymous, who was raped by a priest during confession when she was a 17-year-old novice preparing to become a nun.
“It’s very difficult to talk about the subject in Portugal,” where 80 percent of the population identify as Catholic, this mother, who has an IT education but is employed as a kitchen hand, told AFP last week.
“The Church Must Cleanse”
“I had kept this secret for many years, but I felt like it was becoming increasingly difficult to handle on my own,” she said in a phone interview.
After she reported her assailant to the church authorities, she felt “ignored” because the diocese concerned limited itself to addressing her complaint to the Vatican, which has not followed her up to this day.
Three years later, she finally found a sympathetic ear and the psychological support she needed from the independent commission’s experts.
Alexandra awaits the steps the bishops will take with a mixture of hope and skepticism. long surrounded.
“This initiative is long overdue, the church has to clean itself up,” said another victim, quoted anonymously by Pedro Strecht in his speech.